An 81-year-old woman died and another person was seriously injured in a fire at a four-story brownstone in Brooklyn early Thursday, fire officials said.

Residents of the building on Pacific Street in Crown Heights were forced to scramble out of windows for safety as the blaze ripped through the structure.

“I woke to the woman crying. She was screaming balling out making a lot of noise – when I run to the front, the whole place was blocked with smoke, I couldn’t see nothing,” said Erice Burke, 59, who escaped by kicking out an air conditioning unit and repelling down a cable wire.

“Nothing else was going to save me except the cable wire… I was sticking out the window the smoke was coming out so powerful… I was praying that the wire don’t burst.”

The FDNY could not immediately say what caused the fire, which started at about 12:30 a.m. and was put out an hour and a half later.

“I stepped out of the building. I felt the heat from that fire, man on this side of the street. I said ‘Man that was strong,’” said a neighbor across the street.